Creator of Yoon-Suin and other materials. Propounding my half-baked ideas on role playing games. Jotting down and elaborating on ideas for campaigns, missions and adventures. Talking about general industry-related matters. Putting a new twist on gaming.

Monday, 31 August 2009

Japan has a new government, a huge typhoon is on the way; chaos and madness are upon us. But never fear, here I am again, ready to ramble on and on about stuff tangentially related to role playing games. Today, Gulliver's Travels.

Gulliver's Travels is political/societal satire, this we know, but I'm sure you'll agree it's just as interesting and entertaining to envisage it as straight fantasy. One of my favourite episodes from the book is Gulliver's sinister encounter with the Struldbrugs, which is available online here. A Struldbrug is a rare citizen of Luggnagg who was born with eternal life, but not eternal youth, and is thus condemned to old age unto infinity:

[T]hey commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore [...] When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions.

But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

[...]

As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds.

At ninety, they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they never can amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect, they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.

The most compelling and interesting of Gulliver's comments comes at the end of the chapter:

I could not but agree, that the laws of this kingdom relative to the STRULDBRUGS were founded upon the strongest reasons, and such as any other country would be under the necessity of enacting, in the like circumstances. Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public.

It makes me want to imagine a society in which Struldbrugs or those like them are indeed the rulers; without the laws which legally declare them to be dead at 80, they have gradually accrued the wealth of the entire nation and now use it only to dispose of their envious, avaricious and senile whims. You'd obviously have to tone down the effects of their malaise a little (for example, their short and long term memory loss) to make it at least vaguely believable that the Struldbrugs could have the wherewithal to do anything at all, no matter how capricious.

It sounds a bit like something that might be found in Planescape, somewhere in the Outlands maybe. This is reinforced by the fact that Planescape contains two sects who are a little like the Struldbrugs: the Incantifers, incredibly ancient and ever-living wanderers who exist only to accumulate all the magical knowledge of the multiverse; and the Prolongers, who steal the life-force of others to perpetuate their own. Perhaps the two could be merged into a society of venile old sages whose only aim is to accumulate magical power, and who in order to do so drain other peoples' life forces to prolong their own existence indefinitely. They are senile and governed almost entirely by whim, but have so much sheer magical might that they can never be supplanted.

Thursday, 27 August 2009

[Apologies for the lack of posting the last few days. We visited the in-laws, in darkest Tohoku, where internet access is patchy at best.]

I've been reading Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration by Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto recently. It's an excellent overview of human explorers from prehistoric times to the current day, with the bulk naturally focused on the Iberian voyages of the 15th and 16th centuries, though I confess to a slight irritation at the author. (Fernandez-Arnesto believes that it was the poverty of Western Europe, especially Iberia, which caused the burst in exploration and colonisation - not technological advances - and that this is generally the rule around the world. Fair enough, but it leads him to be overly dismissive of other factors, such as personal bravery - Vasco da Gama for example is portrayed as a fool and an incompetent who could barely tell his arse from his elbow, which simply doesn't square with his achievements. There are also a heck of a lot of unsourced assertions throughout the book; whatever happened to popular history books with actual bibliographies?) You can also quibble about whether mass migrations such as the Polynesian colonisation of the Pacific, however impressive, really qualify as "exploration" in the same sense that Magellan's voyage did.

But anyway, I'm getting off on a tangent. Reading the book has given me an idea: Animal fantasy in the Age of Sail. Think of it. European animals (Rabbits and lynx from Spain and Portugal, Hares and foxes from the British Isles, frogs from France) venturing across the mighty ocean on cogs and caravels, discovering strange foreign lands populated by weird and unimagined beings (quolls, bandicoots and wombats in Australia, dholes and cobras in India, ocelots and caymans in South America) and getting up to all kinds of hijinks.

It surprises me that there isn't a game, much less a series of novels, about this. (There may be and I'm just not aware of it, of course.) It seems so obvious.

Anyway, I'm of the growing opinion that the world needs more Animal Fantasy role playing games, if only to seize the ground back from the furries - who as we all know are the lowest of all the many forms of geek, sitting just below LARPers and people who write stories about Kirk and Spock naked bedtopwrestling.

More thoughts on this tomorrow. By which I mean Animal Fantasy, not Star Trek slash fiction. Just to be clear.

Thursday, 20 August 2009

[More Zephyrs to come, but I saw one of these buggers yesterday crossing the pavement bold as you like and just had to stat one up.]

Gejigeji

The gejigeji are a species of giant hunting centipede-like creatures with 15 pairs of legs and powerful poisons. They are found throughout Yoon-Suin, from the mangroves around the Yellow City all the way to the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon. Wild they are nocturnal predators, but they are frequently domesticated - prized as one of the few creatures which naturally preys on giant velvet worms.

Gejigeji are voracious creatures which exist only to hunt, kill and eat. They are horridly fast, efficient and remorseless, using their excellent eyesight and long antenna to pinpoint victims. They have four modified legs arrayed around their head which they use to inject paralysing poison - strictly speaking a sting, rather than a bite. (Victims must save vs. poison or be permanently paralysed. This paralysis can only be healed by a cure disease or wish spell.)

For some reason certain sections of the fantasy literature crowd (particularly those on the left) have looked down their noses at anything drawing on such fare, calling it derivative, conversative, pastoral and reactionary. (Mostly this is directed at Tolkien.) I say those people are agitprop-obsessed idiots. I have, however, fallen prey in recent years to a disdain for 'eurocentric' fantasy - it's partly what creating Yoon-Suin was motivated by. Now that I've scratched that itch, however, I think I'm ready to go back to the fold. I am after all a European, raised in England, of Scots-Irish parents. European mythology is my heritage, by God. Screw Sword & Sorcery and High Fantasy, I want Romance!

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

My favourite fantasy artists, I would say, are Tony Diterlizzi, Larry Elmore, John Blanche and John Howe. I think that what these illustrators have in common is a thorough grasp of understatedness; even in their grandest moments none of them ever stray into the evil empire of Over The Top. (Except when Elmore gets carried away with the female chest area, and frankly if you have a problem with him doing that I have a problem with you.)

This is the major turn off for me of post-TSR D&D art, I have decided. The loss of the understated.

My current desktop picture is this John Howe masterwork. You don't get more understated than this picture, but I defy anyone to look at it and not want to step inside that room, and then out that door and into the glorious world beyond. The fact that this effect is achieved without the presence of a single person is testament to the skill in composition. Shine on John Howe, you crazy Silmarillion-esque diamond.

These beings shine with an unearthly brilliance, a blinding radiance which never dims. They are impossible to look upon directly.

They breathe beams of light so concentrated that it burns the skin (2d6 damage, no saving throw; victim is blinded for 1d6 turns). Opponents suffer a -2 penalty on all their attack rolls against a light hound.

The opposite of their cousins the light hounds, these canine beings are created not from blackness but from the absence of light itself. They are shadows of infinite depth, so purely dark that to look upon one is to feel that you are not seeing the hound so much as you are seeing its invisibility.

They breathe clouds of darkness as per the wizard spell. Dark hounds themselves are unaffected.

Corrosion made real, acid hounds melt the earth and stone beneath their feet and wilt vegetation; they continually ooze burning liquid and toxic fumes, and are accompanied everywhere by the gases which their corrosive touch creates.

Their breath weapon is a cone of acid which melts metal and flesh. (4d6 damage, saving throw for half. If the victim is wearing armour each hit permanently reduces AC by 1 until no armour remains.) Any normal weapon which hits an acid hound does regular damage but is thereafter rendered useless and corroded.

Sunday, 16 August 2009

These hounds are among the most powerful of all; they are composed not of elemental material but of the very energy which creates those elements. Reality itself warps around them as they move; their sheer presence is enough to bend and twist the phlogiston from which the world is made.

They breathe balls of plasma which disrupt the fabric of creation, equivalent to an explosive cloud spell.

These beings take on an ever-changing, immaterial form which at once appears to be a table, an elephant, a snake, a cup, a cloud, and everything else that exists. And yet somehow they always seems to do so in the shape of a hound.

Chaos hounds breathe a cone of chaos, which combines the effects of a confusion and polymorph other spell. Victims are polymorphed into a random creature (roll on random dungeon encounter table, level 1).

Saturday, 15 August 2009

More zephyr hounds tomorrow, but I feel compelled to comment on the retreading of Dark Sun which is to be released for D&D 4e next year.

My comment: I don't give a shit and I feel bad about even saying as much, because even by spreading the news in my tiny corner of blogland, I am in some very small way contributing to the ridiculous atmosphere of giddy fanboyism surrounding WotC releases; it makes my skin crawl to read rpg.net threads and imagine grown men, grown men, typing things like "Hot Sex. Original boxed set timeline? Amazing win," and "Ohgodwantnow That is an amazingly hot and sexy cover," and not joking but actually being serious.

(I also feel a little bit bad about urinating like this over the genuine excitement of people who are probably very nice in real life. But, eh.)

Anyway. Dark Sun will be released for 4e. This is a little bit like somebody rushing up to tell me that the new Filtermeister(tm) pond filter Model FM 3000, specifically designed for koi carp enthusiasts, is about to come out. Which is to say, short of actually hitting me over the head with the campaign setting book, you couldn't do a whole lot to get me even slightly interested in its existence.

Friday, 14 August 2009

Fire hounds are composed entirely of scorching, crackling flame; they emit continual and powerful heat which sets alight flammable objects and sears the skin of those around them. Their breath weapon is a jet of pure flame which does 3d6 damage (successful saving throw for half).

If a fire hound passes within a yard of any flammable object, there is a 10% chance the object will catch fire. All fire hound attacks do +1 damage from burns.

These hounds exist within and beyond time itself; they appear simultaneously as a puppy and a toothless old cur and everything in between. Their movements are impossible to predict, as they transfer themselves in and out of our timeline with impunity.

Their breath weapon is a cloud of time disruption, which ages all of those affected by 10 years - or causes them to lose an equivalent amount (15% chance) - a successful saving throw reduces this to 5 years. The hounds can move from one timeline to another at will, which is the equivalent of a dimension door spell. Time hounds always win initiative and always surprise their opponents.

Clear hounds are the weakest of zephyrs, immaterial things so faint as to be almost nonexistent. But this very weakness is their great strength, as it makes them invisible to the naked eye - they can only be seen by those with infravision. They have no breath weapon.

Thursday, 13 August 2009

Zephyr Hounds are summoned by powerful sorcerers from strange and distant planes of existence. They come in many varieties, but they always take on a similar form - that of an unearthly large wolfhound with loping gait and ferocious aspect. Most have dragon-like breath weapons.

They are most commonly employed as guardians by their masters, but they are intelligent and wild, and sometimes manaage to break the sorcerous bonds which hold them. These masterless hounds can sometimes be found lurking in wilderness areas.

All Zephyr Hounds can use their breath weapon five times per day.

Inertia Hound

Inertia hounds are a pale grey colour. To the naked eye they hardly appear to move, and yet they do so with great speed. It is said that even to look at one is enough to drain a person of all energy. Their breath weapon is a powerful slow spell, with no saving throw permitted. They always win initiative.

Impact hounds are a deep, dark brown, with amber coloured eyes. They seem to radiate force; just to be in one's presence is enough to cause physical pain. Even their footsteps crack stone and compress the earth beneath them. Their breath weapon is a disintegrating blast which can shatter walls. (Acts as a disintegrate spell.)

Foes of an impact hound are never surprised - the creature's footsteps can always be heard within at least 100'.

These creatures use gravity as their tool and plaything, walking freely on walls and ceilings and effortlessly manipulating reality itself. They can levitate at will and their breath weapon is the equivalent of a reverse gravity spell. They are immune to any spell or spell-like effect which manipulates gravity.

These hounds seem to be composed entirely of swirling, sloshing water which somehow never spills from their dog-like form. But with each step they take they leave pools of water behind them. They reek of brine.

The breath weapon of a water hound is a jet of ice-cold salt water which does 2d6 damage and stuns the victim for 1d6 turns (successful saving throw for half).

Tuesday, 11 August 2009

On the subject of elemental magic, I've always wanted to D&D-ize the Zephyr Hounds from the roguelike ToME. One of the most dangerous creatures in the game, there are many varieties based on various elements, from fire to 'impact' and 'ethereal', and they roam in packs around the dungeon, breathing their element of choice and generally making life extremely difficult for the player. (Like all contemporary roguelikes, ToME's AI is pretty decent, and the Zephyr Hounds are clever about not letting themselves get caught in confined areas - so they can use their breath attacks to maximum effect.)

So over the next few days I'll stat up a few BECMI versions for your reading pleasure.

I was woken up at 5am by an earthquake this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so this is the extent of my blogging activities for today.

Monday, 10 August 2009

A friend linked me up to Elements, a free and horrendously addictive strategic online card game in the mold of Magic: The Gathering. Try it and enjoy it, but be forewarned: the thing makes crack cocaine seem like marmite.

Anyway, it got me thinking about one part of 2nd edition AD&D that I really think was poorly executed - specialty mages. A nice concept in theory, but very bland in practice. It added a very small dose of extra flavour to the magic-user concept, but many of the schools of magic were vastly superior to others and it all seemed rather dry.

Elements demonstrates exactly how to pull off a flavourful magic system: wizards are defined by elemental type (air, earth, fire, water, light, dark, death, life, entropy, gravity, time, and aether), each with its own set of spells which summon creatures, conjur items and so on. (I assume this is what goes on in Magic: The Gathering too; I've never played it.) Each element has a very different tone and feel, and offers genuinely interesting options - rather than 2nd edition AD&D's approach of "you get an extra spell but can't take certain other spells".

Maybe when Yoon-Suin is done and dusted I'll think about a book of Elemental Magic. That sort of thing has undoubtedly been done before, but I'll do it better

Sunday, 9 August 2009

It's funny how geeks, who really should know better, like to divide themselves into in-groups and out-groups based on their own interests being "cooler" than the others. You can see this in lots of areas. Fans of Star Trek (Original Series) like to see themselves as somehow superior to those who prefer The Next Generation, perhaps because TOS lacks TNG's PC undertones (or overtones). Adult fans of Harry Potter wouldn't dream of touching a proper fantasy series like The Book of the New Sun, despite that series' infinite superiority in every respect. And people who frequent forums like the Forge and story-games.com love to trumpet their preferred games' superiority over more traditional ones.

The way some 1st edition AD&Ders talk about 2nd edition is another example of this phenomenon, I often think. The complaints against 2nd edition (that it got rid of "devils" and "demons"; that it was written for young adolescents rather than adults; that it had a high fantasy tone where 1st edition was sword & sorcery) are primarily attempts to annex coolness to the 1st edition flagpole. In this discourse 1st edition represents some sort of mature, edgy, rebellious game which only True Badasses are brave or foolhardy enough to even touch, whereas 2nd edition is fluffy, inconsequential, childish and anodyne, and the preserve of only the most pathetic of nerds.

I find the whole thing utterly laughable, and whenever I see such arguments advanced I always envisage Tommy Saxondale, the ex-roadie turned pest control expert, standing there in his greying beard and faded leather jacket, waxing lyrical about the time he toured with "the Floyd". These people may think they are true nonconformists screwing The System, but what they usually are are rather drab middle-aged men pining for their lost youths and shaking their fists at a world that has absolutely no place for them.

There is nothing wrong with Raging Against the Dying of the Light - like Voltaire, I will defend to the death a 1st edition AD&D fan's right to enjoy his game of choice, even though I may not like it all that much. (I won't actually defend it to the death, but you know what I mean.) But let's not pretend that there's anything cool about liking 1st edition, or that it makes you more of a badass than those silly 2nd edition nerds. In the final analysis you're a grown man pretending to be an elf. Which, okay, I suppose could be described as edgy, but not in a good way.

Friday, 7 August 2009

One of my great heroes is Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It's not often you read a non-fiction book where you find yourself agreeing with almost everything contained therein, and, not only that, but having it illuminate certain parts of your own worldview which you haven't been able to properly express. Stephen Pinker did this with The Blank Slate, and I can think of a few other examples, but Nassim Taleb is the only author I've read who has managed the feat of doing it twice. (Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan.)

I'm re-reading Fooled by Randomness at the moment. Last night I was struck by this passage and how it applies to D&D:

Assume I engage in a gambling strategy that has 999 chances in 1,000 of making $1 (event A) and 1 chance i n 1,000 of losing $10,000 (event B)... My expectation is a loss of close to $9 (obtained by multiplying the probabilities by the corresponding outcomes). The frequency or probability of the loss, in and by itself, is totally irrelevant; it needs to be judged in connection with the magnitude of the outcome. Here A is far more likely than B. Odds are that we would make money by betting for event A, but it is not a good idea to do so.

You can apply this way of thinking to rpg combat too. Take a D&D fighter with a THAC0 of 19 and a longsword (average damage 4.5), fighting a 1+1 HD orc (average 5.5 hp) with an AC of 6. The chance of hitting is 8 - that is, there is a 40% chance of success. From this we can extrapolate the expected damage per round the fighter deals to the orc: 1.8 hp (4.5/100x40). So the orc can hope to survive 4 rounds on average (just). So much for that.

Now let's take the example of an 8th level fighter (THAC0 12) with a longsword +2, fighting a 9+9 HD dragon with AC 1 (average 81 hp). The chance of hitting is 12, or 60%. The average damage for a +2 longsword is 6.5. The average damage per round is 3.9. Thus an 8th level fighter whaling away at the dragon will finally triumph after 21 rounds. However, the reverse (let's say the dragon does 1-8/1-8/1-10 damage per round, or 4.5/4.5/5.5, which is to say an expectation of 2.25/2.25/2.75 [7.25 hp] damage per round assuming the fighter's AC is -1) will likely mean that the fighter won't last quite as long.

My maths here may well be incorrect (it isn't my strong suit, and you'll notice I didn't calculate extra attacks for the 8th level fighter, frankly because I'm lazy) but you get the point, which is that it's useful for a DM to have a basic idea of this sort of thing when planning encounters and so forth. Nassim Taleb, ladies and gents. Read him.

Tuesday, 4 August 2009

Elephant Priests are the clerics and religious leaders in the Hundred Kingdoms. They direct the worship of the Elephant Demon and channel his rage and hunger in battle.

The cult of the Elephant Demon is a new one, but now widespread in the Hundred Kingdoms - where until a century ago each city-state had its own pantheon of spirits. Now the people say that the Elephant Demon has devoured all those other gods and will not stop until he has devoured the world. It is rare to find a place where the cult has not transplanted the old native beliefs.

The cult's practices are byzantine and rarely spoken of aloud. They involve much sacrifice; often victims are people captured in battle. The unfortunates have their limbs and ribs broken and are then thrown, dead or alive, into a pit called the Elephant's Mouth, to rot. Usually these pits are hugely elaborate and decorated all around with golden statues.

Elephant Priests are battle leaders. Unlike clerics in other lands they do not have the ability to turn undead or cast spells. Instead, they can only use the fury of the Elephant Demon to smite their opponents.

Elephant Priests may channel the power of the Elephant Demon to blast their opponents. This power can only be used once on one set of opponents. The player should declare to the DM that he wishes to use his Smite Attack in the same way that a cleric's player declares an attempt to Turn Undead.

The Smite Attack affects 1d8 HD of monsters; this rises to 2d8 HD at 4th level and 3d8 HD at 8th level. Victims lose 33% of their remaining hit points, whatever that number is; monsters with 3 HD or more may save vs. death to negate the effects.

Rage of the Elephant Demon

Using this power gives the Elephant Priest a bonus of +1 to his attack rolls and +2 to his damage rolls for 1d3 hours, and a bonus to hit points for that period (+d4 at 1st level level, +d8 at 4th level, +2d6 at 8th level). When those 1d3 hours have passed the Elephant Priest immediately loses his hit point bonus; if this results in his hit points total passing below 0, he dies.

Hunger of the Elephant Demon

Using this power allows the Elephant Priest to sap the energy of his enemies. For the next 1d3 hours, he can attempt to grab an opponent (successful attack roll) and drain 1d6 hit points from the victim. This rises to 1d8 hit points at 4th level and 2d6 hit points at 8th level. As soon as a successful drain has been achieved, the power cannot be used again for 24 hours.

Monday, 3 August 2009

There's been some hilarious and depressing stuff at the Knights & Knaves Alehouse recently. Via Kellri, there's this amazing thread, where a handful of reasonable people try to have a discussion while surrounded by jibbering, bile-filled idiots. It reminds me of one of those chat room discussions on virgin.net circa 1997, where you'd have two people in a room having a pleasant conversation, punctuated by obscene and nonsensical comments in the background from adolescent boys. Then there's a thread accusing Zeb Cook of being a liar because he doesn't think the 2e ranger was based on Drizzt. (Can you get a more geeky discussion subject than that? It even beats "That idiot thinks Captain Picard is better than Captain Kirk!" in the nerdliness stakes.)

And finally there's a nice dollop of Old School Orthodoxy on top, to finish off a particularly bitter-tasting and stodgy cake. Yep, if it was ever in doubt: the OSR isn't so much a revolution as a counter-reformation, and I sometimes get the feeling that some of its supporters rather wish they had the methods of the Spanish Inquisition at their disposal, if only it was legal.

I'm not a member of the Knights & Knaves Alehouse but this sort of thing makes me want to join in. Far more entertaining than what's on TV, at any rate.

Sunday, 2 August 2009

The DM in a role playing game is God, but he is a constrained and very human one - he is the God of the Hebrews, the one who made up his mind to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and everyone in them but who Abraham persuaded not to if righteous people were living there; the one who gambled with Satan over the soul of Job; the one who Jacob wrestled with in the desert and defeated. He isn't the infallible Christian version who knows all and whose word is always true and always final. He can be negotiated with and sometimes his mind can be changed.

1) We both roll dice.2) If you roll high, your view of reality prevails.3) If I roll high, my view of reality prevails.4) If we're close, we negotiate.

Of course, these Perfected Game Rules require adherence to my Don't Be A Dickhead philosophy, i.e. it requires that both parties be friendly and reasonable people who have social skills. But I'd like to give them a try some day.

Their chief advantage, apart from the fact that you don't have to arse around with things like game books and stats, is that they add another crucial human element to the game. Negotiation is a huge part of what makes games like Diplomacy so great, and is a cornerstone of human interaction; done correctly it is always mutually satisfying, like most other cornerstones of human interaction. (Especially the one where two people engage in naked bed top wrestling.) The fact that it isn't a major part of a lot of rpgs is a sad consequence of the fact that the hobby seems to attract a proportion of dickheads (because you need robust rules to deal with them), but it doesn't have to be that way.